Fabrics are generally formed by weaving warps and wefts in a crossing and inter-overlapping manner. In an automatic loom, warps are moved up and down by mechanism driven by motors to allow wefts which are moved by suitable means, such as pressurized fluid, to extend through between the warps to cross and overlap the warps for the formation of the fabric. A selvage is required to form along the longitudinal edge of the fabric to avoid the yarns (warps and wefts) from loosening from the fabric. Thus, in an automatic loom, selvage forming device is required for the formation of the fabric.
Further, since the wefts used to form the fabric usually have a length greater than the span of the fabric, the excessive length of the wefts should be cut and separated from the fabric. Thus, a cord catching device for catching and removing the excessive length of the wefts from the finished fabric should be devised to improve the manufacturing of the fabric.
Conventional automatic looms usually comprise a selvage forming device as shown in FIG. 8. The conventional selvage forming device comprises a toothed wheel D on which two yarn reels with yarn wound thereon, designated with the reference F, are eccentrically mounted. The yarns extend out from the reels F through guide arms F1 mounted on the reels F or the toothed wheel D so that by the rotation of the toothed wheel D, the yarns from the two reels F are fed to the loom in an inter-crossing manner so as to form the selvage. The disadvantage is that due to the direct mounting of the yarn reels F on the toothed wheel D, the rapid rotation of the toothed wheel D causes vibration of the reels F and this may make the reels F get loose from the toothed wheel D after a long time operation.
On the other hand, the conventional cord catching device usually comprises a rotating member to wind or entangle a plurality of yarns together with the excessive length of the wefts to be cut pinched between the yarns to form a "rope" so as to remove the wefts that are cut from the fabric. Since the yarns are only rotated at one end thereof, the pinching effect may not be adequate and as a remedy, more yarns should be used to more firmly pinch the wefts to be cut. This causes a waste of yarns.